The insect societies
(1971)

Tools

"... There has been increased research interest in systems composed of multiple autonomous mobile robots exhibiting collective behavior. Groups of mobile robots are constructed, with an aim to studying such issues as group architecture, resource conflict, origin of cooperation, learning, and geometric pr ..."

There has been increased research interest in systems composed of multiple autonomous mobile robots exhibiting collective behavior. Groups of mobile robots are constructed, with an aim to studying such issues as group architecture, resource conflict, origin of cooperation, learning, and geometric problems. As yet, few applications of collective robotics have been reported, and supporting theory is still in its formative stages. In this paper, we give a critical survey of existing works and discuss open problems in this field, emphasizing the various theoretical issues that arise in the study of cooperative robotics. We describe the intellectual heritages that have guided early research, as well as possible additions to the set of existing motivations. 1

...ooperative robotics. The majority of existing work in the field has cited biological systems as inspiration or justification. Well-known collective behaviors of ants, bees, and other eusocial insects =-=[Wil71]-=- provide striking existence proofs that systems composed of simple agents can accomplish sophisticated tasks in the real world. It is widely held that the cognitive capabilities of these insects are v...

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Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR&apos;s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR&apos;s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

...ata, they would suggest to us that these ties are of strength (durability, intensity) comparable to strong ties among humans and that individuality is as pronounced among animals as among people (see =-=Wilson 1971-=-, p. 459). Since individuality seems much more muted or even nonexistent among insects and other invertebrates, we presume that the network models discussed in this paper are less appropriate for anal...

"... The young science of complexity, which studies systems as diverse as the human body, the earth and the universe, offers novel insights on the question raised in the title. The science of complexity explains large-scale collective behavior, such as well-functioning capitalistic markets, and also pre ..."

The young science of complexity, which studies systems as diverse as the human body, the earth and the universe, offers novel insights on the question raised in the title. The science of complexity explains large-scale collective behavior, such as well-functioning capitalistic markets, and also predicts that financial crashes and depressions are intrinsic properties resulting from the repeated nonlinear interactions between investors. Applying concepts and methods from complex theory and statistical physics, we have developed mathematical measures to successfully predict the emergence and development of speculative bubbles as well as depressions. This essay attempts to capture and extend the essence of the book with the same title published in January 2003 by Princeton University Press. Recent novelties and live predictions are available at

"... . A simple mechanism is presented, based on ant-like agents, for routing and load balancing in telecommunications networks, following the initial works of Appleby and Stewart (1994) and Schoonderwoerd et al. (1997). In the present work, agents are very similar to those proposed by Schoonderwoerd et ..."

. A simple mechanism is presented, based on ant-like agents, for routing and load balancing in telecommunications networks, following the initial works of Appleby and Stewart (1994) and Schoonderwoerd et al. (1997). In the present work, agents are very similar to those proposed by Schoonderwoerd et al. (1997), but a r e supplemented with a simplified dynamic programming capability, initially experimented by Gurin (1997) with more complex agents, which is shown to significantly improve the network&apos;s relaxation and its response to perturbations. Topic area: Intelligent agents and network management 2 1. Introduction 1.1 Routing in telecommunications networks Routing is a mechanism that allows calls to be transmitted from a source to a destination through a sequence of intermediate switching stations or nodes, because not all points are directly connected: the cost of completely connecting a network becomes prohibitive for more than a few nodes. Routing selects routes that meet the o...

"... An artificial social system is a set of restrictions on agents' behaviors in a multiagent environment. Its role is to allow agents to coexist in a shared environment and pursue their respective goals in the presence of other agents. This paper argues that artificial social systems exist in prac ..."

An artificial social system is a set of restrictions on agents&apos; behaviors in a multiagent environment. Its role is to allow agents to coexist in a shared environment and pursue their respective goals in the presence of other agents. This paper argues that artificial social systems exist in practically every multi-agent system, and play a major role in the performance and effectiveness of the agents. We propose artificial social systems as an explicit and formal object of study, and investigate several basic issues that arise in their design. Keywords: Social Laws, Multi-Agent Systems, Off-Line Design This work was supported in part by the US-Israel Binational Foundation. The work of the first author was supported by an Alon Fellowship, and by a Helen and Marcus Kimmelman Career Development Chair. The second author was supported in part by an Eshkol Fellowship of the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, and later by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Part of the resea...

... social system consists of the legal system, together with various conventions regarding how people behave. Societies of animals, too, have conventions of behavior that constitute their social system =-=[40]-=-. We can also view conventions and restrictions employed in artificial multi-agent systems as constituting a social system. Our thesis, however, is that artificial social systems should be treated exp...

"... Insect societies – colonies of ants, bees, wasps and termites – vary enormously in their social complexity. Social complexity is a broadly used term that encompasses many individual and colony-level traits and characteristics such as colony size, polymorphism and foraging strategy. A number of earli ..."

Insect societies – colonies of ants, bees, wasps and termites – vary enormously in their social complexity. Social complexity is a broadly used term that encompasses many individual and colony-level traits and characteristics such as colony size, polymorphism and foraging strategy. A number of earlier studies have considered the relationships among various correlates of social complexity in insect societies; in this review, we build upon those studies by proposing additional correlates and show how all correlates can be integrated in a common explanatory framework. The various correlates are divided among four broad categories (sections). Under ‘polyphenism ’ we consider the differences among individuals, in particular focusing upon ‘caste ’ and specialization of individuals. This is followed by a section on ‘totipotency’ in which we consider the autonomy and subjugation of individuals. Under this heading we consider various aspects such as intracolony conflict, worker reproductive potential and physiological or morphological restrictions which limit individuals ’ capacities to perform a range of tasks or functions. A section entitled ‘organization of work’ considers a variety of aspects, e.g. the ability to tackle group, team or partitioned tasks, foraging strategies and colony reliability and efficiency. A final section, ‘communication and functional integration’, considers how individual activity is coordinated to produce an integrated and adaptive colony. Within each

"... Abstract—This article overviews the concepts of distributed intelligence, outlining the motivations for studying this field of research. First, common systems of distributed intelligence are classified based upon the types of interactions exhibited, since the type of interaction has relevance to the ..."

Abstract—This article overviews the concepts of distributed intelligence, outlining the motivations for studying this field of research. First, common systems of distributed intelligence are classified based upon the types of interactions exhibited, since the type of interaction has relevance to the solution paradigm to be used. We outline three common paradigms for distributed intelligence — the bioinspired paradigm, the organizational and social paradigm, and the knowledge-based, ontological paradigm — and give examples of how these paradigms can be used in multi-robot systems. We then look at a common problem in multirobot systems — that of task allocation — and show how the solution approach to this problem is very different depending upon the paradigm chosen for abstracting the problem. Our conclusion is that the paradigms are not interchangeable, but rather the selection of the appropriate paradigm is dependent

...nimal societies can be grouped into two broad categories: those that differentiate, and those that integrate. Societies that differentiate are realized in a dramatic way in the social insect colonies =-=[124]-=-. These colonies arise due to an innate differentiation of blood relatives that creates a strict division of work and a system of social interactions among the members. Members are formed within the g...

"... Social insect societies and more specifically ant colonies, are distributed systems that, in spite of the simplicity of their individuals, present a highly structured social organization. As a result of this organization, ant colonies can accomplish complex tasks that in some cases exceed the indivi ..."

Social insect societies and more specifically ant colonies, are distributed systems that, in spite of the simplicity of their individuals, present a highly structured social organization. As a result of this organization, ant colonies can accomplish complex tasks that in some cases exceed the individual capabilities of a single ant. The study of ant colonies behavior and of their self-organizing capabilities is of interest to knowledge retrieval/ management and decision support systems sciences, because it provides models of distributed adaptive organization which are useful to solve difficult optimization, classification, and distributed control problems, among others. In the present work we overview some models derived from the observation of real ants, emphasizing the role played by stigmergy as distributed communication paradigm, and we present a novel strategy to tackle unsupervised clustering as well as data retrieval problems. The present ant clustering system (ACLUSTER) avoids not only short-term memory based strategies, as well as the use of several artificial ant types (using different speeds), present in some recent approaches. Moreover and according to our knowledge, this is also the first application of ant systems into textual document clustering.

"... We present a quantitative assessment of the value of cooperation for solving constraint satisfaction problems through a series of experiments, as well as a general theory of cooperative problem solving. These experiments, using both hierarchical and non-hierarchical cooperation, clearly exhibit a ..."

We present a quantitative assessment of the value of cooperation for solving constraint satisfaction problems through a series of experiments, as well as a general theory of cooperative problem solving. These experiments, using both hierarchical and non-hierarchical cooperation, clearly exhibit a universal improvement in performance that results from cooperation. We also show both theoretically and experimentally the super-linear speed-up that results from having a diverse collection of skills among the cooperating agents. Our results suggest an alternative methodology to existing techniques for solving constraint satisfaction problems in computer science and distributed artificial intelligence.